


The Salvation

by Severusslave



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Background Sam/Dean, Gore, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mpreg, No Lilith, No angels, PTSD, S4 AU, Shock, Torture, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:44:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severusslave/pseuds/Severusslave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell changed Dean; soul's salvation comes in the most unlikely form to the one destroyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> My offering to the Secret Santa Winchester Mpreg Exchange on LJ, a gift to deanlives, our wonderful mod! Who wanted knocked up, back-from-hell-and-depressed!Dean who loves food.

 

Down in the pit, everything was different. 

Things you've valued in life did not mean anything here and were forcibly destroyed. Ripped out of you and judged by them. Laughed about by demons. Ridiculed and got twisted so extremly, that, when they finally, finally, picked up another soon to be wrecked memory, the cherished, valued piece of you was black. Dark. Ruined.

He almost preferred being ripped – sliced, burned, torn, cut – apart by them.

+++

After a long time, things …had changed. Inexplicably. 

The lower demons, the nightmares that were crudely, coarsely violent would not touch him anymore. They still wanted to, this Dean knew. They had surrounded him; beleaguered him, but had no longer dared to come near him. Behind the invisible perimeter around him, they then clawed at him, spit at him, cursed him. Mocked him.

When this first had happened, Dean had known better then to be relieved. Nothing ever got better down here. Nothing.

It had taken a surprisingly long time until one of the higher demons – Dean knew him as the one who favoured teeth; its own to bite chunks out of him, Dean's he preferred to twist out of their gums – noticed the change.

It had not been amused. At all.

Dean still wasn't able to estimate the time he spend down in the pit. It was decades, so much he knew, but he also knew that he lacked memories of the frequent times the higher demons wrecked and destroyed him. Some of them liked him for his mind, they loved to play games with him, and time got as twisted as he did. But one, one demon – recognisable by the burning sensation of boiling oil on Dean's skin whenever it got near him – liked him for his brain. Dean had never wanted to know the feeling of having your scalp ripped off and your skull drilled open and sawed in half to reveal the brain.

Now he knew that while painful and gory and dreadful, it was nothing to the sensation of having parts of your brain plucked out and eaten before your eyes. The demon was skilled, it could go on eating the bloody chunks like chocolates for hours before Dean died and lost all recollection of thoughts and time. When he got put back together, healed in a way, to restart the procedure, the demon made a point of ridiculing him, showing off to its peers. 

Nobody should ever be able to recall the decay of intelligence that is having their brain slowly destroyed. 

Thus, he lacked memories. 

Still he had been able to notice the changes, ponder on them, wonder what might have been altered inside him that even demons would not want to touch him. Would not dare to.

They left his gut alone. His intestines were allowed to remain functional. The tasters, cutters and devourers were no longer surrounding him. Only the ones that ripped out his limbs, slurped their marrow and adorned themselves with his sinews and toes were left. Them and the talkers – the twisters of memories.

Dean spend years, a seeming eternity, as a screaming limbless torso on sharp, hot ground, before, suddenly, something happened. 

All he could recall later was light.

+++

The next thing truly engraved in his memories was intense surprise. He'd woken up in a coffin - easy, old nightmare, old fear, he'd done that hundreds of time already, always seeing blood-thirsty, giggling demons waiting behind the cold wood and the earth. 

This time he saw the sky. Grass. Ants.

It even smelled real.

Dean dragged himself away from the gravesite. He rolled onto his back and fell asleep watching the sky. 

+++

He woke to frantic pleas and shaking. As he opened his eyes he saw children, three of them, boys and a girl, looking at him in panic and fear. The girl cried. 

Dean tried to sit up. Did not work. The broader boy propped him up and knelt behind him as support, the girl gave him water out of a blue aluminium flask. Dean heard the other boy speak to both a cell phone and a walkie-talkie, reporting their find to a ranger or a parent and to an emergency call worker.

The girl tied off his leg's blood supply the best she could using the fleece sweater she'd worn as a jacket, Dean stared at the colorful tank she now only wore, it lay snug against her puerile, flat chest. They could not be older then nine. He asked her about her name. His voice was rough and Dean knew he scared her.

"Molly. I'm Molly," She said to him nonetheless. Brave girl.

"Dean," he pressed out, and Molly said, "Hi, Dean." Then he had to succumb to a fit of coughing, that robbed him of his breath and made him black out. The last thing he heard was high-pitched voices telling him to hold on; the last thing he saw was the circle of white flowers – lilies of the valley – around his grave.

+++

He regained consciousness in a hospital room. His left arm was in a cast, seemingly everything else was heavily bandaged. He was on painkillers. He was hungry. Bobby was next to his bed.

He got sprinkled with holy water.

That moment, Dean did not know who was more relieved that nothing more came from it than a wet pillow case, him or Bobby.

+++

He healed quickly now. So quickly that the doctors that had sewn him up declared him a miracle to his face. Dean could not care less.

Dean knew that still high on too many painkillers he had told Bobby the true origin and reason for his fast recovery rate. He knew that he'd been too detailed; he'd never seen Bobby cry before.

He knew that he'd been too honest; he found that he could not clearly differentiate between true memories and false, twisted ones. What if this one fight between them had been true, or that cruel word? Him and Bobby were hunters. Crude men. What if this betrayal had been part of a plan, a strategy, and had not been a hurtful, deliberate one?

The pit's demons had won, he no longer felt able to trust one father figure he'd looked up to his whole life. Doubts ate at his heart.

Dean was afraid of meeting his brother. His Sam.

Who had demon's blood flowing in his veins.

+++

As soon as he was proclaimed able to feed himself on his own and the feeding tube to his stomach was taken out, he'd been attacked by ravenous hunger. He'd gotten Bobby to get him food, healthy food, yes, but whatever. Anything to placate the burning need for food. Placate it, because it never could be stilled.

It always was there. Tormenting him. Echoing hell.

He ate everything he was allowed, he stole from other patients, he stole from the little store in the hospital as soon as he was able to move.

Bobby caught him soon, he had been devouring caramel chocolate bars in his little wet-cell bathroom. High calories, high energy. The man had been all but ready to drag him to the doctors, Dean kept him from it. Dared him to tell the hospital's staff that he needed sustenance to heal the effects from the pit, that couldn't be measured by science. Bobby had acquiesced, helped him by getting him even more food, high sugar food - the only thing that seemed to work - and hurried up Dean's discharge from the hospital.

+++

Their journey to Bobby's home took longer then it should have. More stops than usual were made. The stopped not only for sleep and Dean's comfort, as he could not sit up for longer then a few hours, but also at every second all you can eat restaurant. 

While Dean rejoiced in every bite he ate – delicious American cuisine, corn, coleslaw, bbq, pies, Asian food, jiaozi, teriyaki chicken, sweetsour pork, and donuts, madeleines, tartes – deep inside of him he was terrified. The reason for the need for food terrified him; he did not gain weight and while he felt stronger whenever he ate, all the food disappeared to somewhere inside him after he swallowed it. He had not once felt the need to relieve himself so far.

+++

Dean asleep had always been an experience, never had Bobby seen somebody move so much in sleep as had Dean Winchester. Tossing and turning, wrapping himself in the blankets, pillows at his feet, arms everywhere. 

Now, Dean slept differently. He still moved. But he fought now. Struggled against the night terrors that plagued him, kicked, punched.

Rest was not found, neither by him nor by Dean. Not really. Bobby looked forward to his own house, when he could sleep in the same room as his damaged almost son, but not having to sleep in the same bed anymore. Both of them were beaten up by now. Restraining Dean did not work, holding him down did not work, leaving him alone was impossible and sleeping next to him was an adventure.

One more day of travel then they'd be home.

+++

It had taken two months and a lot of favours to hunt down Sam and contact him. Sam had hurried to them at the news. With him came Ruby.

+++

Dean was silent now. Moody. He seemed to Bobby older then his years, and it made him mourn for Dean, made him fear that what had been done to his son was much, much worse then the horrific things Dean had confessed to under the influence in the hospital.

Dean seemed to be a shadow of himself, he slept, fitfully, he ate and he walked around the yard. He worked whatever tasks Bobby made him work. Polishing things, doing the dishes, mowing the lawn even. Playing with the dogs to keep them fit.

Only when with the boys Dean seemed halfway at peace. Only in contrast to this relaxation, Bobby could see that the calm demeanor of Dean's was a façade, only because of the dogs Bobby knew how tormented Dean really had to be underneath the emotionless face and the silence.

Bobby crafted a necklace for Dean, made out of a chunk of discarded left-overs of broken parts of Dean's car and blessed wood. He soldered powerful runes of healing and peace of mind into them and imbued the wood in a potion of healing herbs and herbs of power. When he gave it to Dean he saw the first, brief smile on his face since he resurrection. He slept better now, was able to rest more.

+++

When Sam and company arrived Bobby was not thrilled. At all. But when Dean saw and felt Ruby's presence, he flipped.

As soon as Dean and Ruby laid eyes on each other a battle began, as both seemed to be equally disgusted with the other's presence and equally keen to kill their opponent. 

The thing that decided the outcome of the battle was that while Ruby seemed afraid and disgusted, both eager to hurt Dean and eager to run away from him, Dean was hysterical. He screeched curses and screamed for help, screamed for mercy. He defended himself more then he attacked but his moves were destructive. While he seemed to be trapped in nightmares, reliving hell, fighting in a trance, Ruby was clearheaded.

With Bobby firmly on Dean's side, and Sam unsure of the reason for Dean's behaviour and trying to appease Ruby, the outcome of the fight was decided as soon as it became clear that both opponents would not stop. 

And Dean was more important than Ruby ever could be.

Sam destroyed her. 

Dean watched. As in awe as Bobby himself was.

+++

The new, darker body twitched, phased in and out of view in the sickening way only hell's children could. It looked pitiful up to his brother, trying to make Sam be merciful. When it saw that its efforts were for nothing, its demeanor changed to its true face. 

Snarled lips, tried to utter curses; old, ancient magic. Noises like rusty metal cutting through living flesh. Chalkboard screeches.

Then the demon was vomitted out of its host, Dean stared. His periphery vision told him that Sam bled from ears and nose, still he kept up his powerful annihilation. Dean felt despair as he saw again the dark, inky cloud of evil in front of him, he whimpered.

His high-pitched whine was the only thing the lasted in the sudden silence after the host fell to the dirt, dead. The demon burned up, vanishing into nothing, erased from existence.

+++

Things took long to return to a normal condition, even if the resemblance of past normality was but a thin veil over the deep problems and hurt they carried in them. In the beginning, the days after the hasty burial of the Ruby's last host, things were heated. 

Both Bobby and Sam, but especially the latter, were unsure of Dean and his intense reaction to Ruby. Sam had to scrutinize the origins of Dean's resurrection and had been getting more and more frustrated when he came to no conclusions that could satisfy him.

Dean had changed, that, too, was a point of frustration and anger. While, theoretically, Sam could understand that hell had to be a immense force that could bend persons, twist them, change them, coming to face with the changes in his brother was another thing.

He was silent, introverted, did not let anybody touch him, prone to sit still and gaze into the off for hours, would stop in motion while doing mundane tasks, deep in thoughts. Neither Bobby nor Sam could get him out of those spells, and the one time one of the dogs ran into him while Dean was …absent, he reacted violently. The dogs forgave him eventually, the liked him.

Then there was the eating thing. 

It hadn't abated, like Bobby and Dean silently had hoped. Dean still craved and needed as vast amounts of food to keep up his energy levels as he did the first day. Far above the standard of a grown man's needs.

Money got tight, Sam often resorted to driving to the nearest college towns and liberated students off their money hustling pool and darts. Still, they now bought filling cheap food in bulk to lower their costs. Infrequent trips to a megastore armed with a fake credit card made up for the rest. 

Two months into their newly regained peacefully functioning household arrangement, Dean seemed to gradually relax and cope with reality again. That was what it looked like for Bobby and Sam, actually Dean was relieved that, finally, his food binges showed effect and that he –at last – gained weight.

Until he felt movement inside of him.

+++

He freaked. He'd brought something with him, inside of him. He raised a blade against himself, needing to cut it out of him, this vile thing that squirmed in his guts. He woke up in bed the next morning, everything normal. Neither Bobby nor Sam had found him and stopped him, they did not showed the merest hint of knowing of his intentions.

He tried to stop indulging in the fine meals one of the other men prepared for him, he fainted and when he regained consciousness, he heard himself thanking Sam for the huge meal. 

He thought of using poison and wasn't even able to get near the shed in which Bobby kept the rat poison. His legs locked and he found himself turning back into the house.

He tried to lose the food through forced vomiting – that was when Sam found him.

+++

They made him talk then. Not about hell, they all skirted that topic, earlier attempts had resulted in disaster. But about his behaviour, what it was that had caused this decline. If he knew anything more then they did about the food binges, about his vomiting. He didn't answer, but provided them with morsels that satisfied them. For the moment.

After that Sam and Bobby did not let him out of their sight again, the kept watch over him in shifts. Dean resorted to naps on the living room's couch, armed with books, and his own damning thoughts. They made him keep down his food as well.

On that couch, during one of those naps, Bobby saw what had Dean panicking. Something was kicking inside of him.

+++

Despite feeling horrified and scared, Bobby kept calm. He let Dean on the couch, asleep, and went on to gather ingredients for a potion that, when applied to the eyes, revealed most demonic and magical beings and curses. It took him half an hour to brew and cool the solution. 

Then he dared and let drops of it fall into his eyes. He blinked a few times and then his house seemed to be ablaze by all kinds of different energy manifestations, glowing books and light arcs. He made his way to the living room, and …stopped.

Inside of Dean, lay curled up the brightest source of innocent, good energy and slept. Slept, while sucking on a thumb and lazily spinning inside its shelter.

Bobby stared at the baby, unbelieving, shocked at its mere existence. This was the opposite of what he had expected to find. He took a long moment to watch the infant sleep, then ripped his gaze away from it and looked at Dean. 

There was a bright tendril of power from Dean's stomach to the infant directly. It was wound and curled like an umbilical cord. Well, that explained the hunger and the bouts of energy loss that Dean experienced when he was not properly fed. 

Bobby returned his eyes to the infant, went over to Dean from where he stood next to the doorway and used his flat hand to measure the baby's size. He'd have to look up how far along its development was, since, so he saw, while there was a place for it to grow there was no additional way for it to be born. Bobby did not want to be surprised by a man needing to give birth, but being unable to, hemorrhaging and dying in front of him.

He'd figure this out.

+++

When Bobby told Dean and Sam of his discoveries, Sam reacted shocked, hysterical and unbelieving. Then there was a brief moment when he was angry, it quickly resolved. Dean, on the other hand, kept silent, as was his usual state nowadays.

It would take long to make Dean react in any positive way about the thing inside him. His only question was if it was in any way demonic. Bobby told him no, and that seemed to be it for the crushed shadow of all that Dean had been once. From then on he ignored it. 

The day that Sam and Bobby figured it all out, the hows, the whys, Dean was heavily rounded and the two men watched him closely for any sign that birth commenced. It was December, now, and they had shacked up for the winter more or less. It had given Bobby and Sam lots of time to spend researching. 

Their hypothesis and the most logical, if one could speak of logic in this case, was that the infant had been conceived by Sam and Dean during one of their last day to live couplings. There was a pathway of white energy that bound the baby to Sam, visible when they used the potion. Whether it was somehow Sam's doing, or if the supernatural surrounding of hell had made conception happen, they'd probably never know.

It was in the beginning of December, close to St. Nick's day, they had the thought-provoking impulse as Sam read in a tome about the levels of hell that no innocent soul was allowed entry to hell or any redeemed one could remain there. Thus, they concluded it was the budding soul of the baby that did cause Dean's expulsion from hell and his resurrection here in his old body. 

It explained the scars, much less there were on Dean's torso, even though there were plenty still. It had taken drastic measures to reduce the worst of them, the ones so drenched in dark energy, so drenched with hate. Dean would always be horribly scarred all over his body, but Bobby had done his best with potions, draughts and rituals to ban the evil out of them, letting them heal close to smooth skin. The numerous wounds that Dean bore would always ache, but he wasn't any longer disfigured by welts upon welts of scar tissue.

It explained the hunger, the infant had to have suffered a lot of pain and effort to make it to this side of existence. Maybe it was even responsible for Dean's new live in a more active way, the power surrounding it was formidable.

+++

They had hoped to shake Dean out of his depression, by telling and trying to convince him of the role his child played in his rescue out of hell.

Dean listened to them, listened carefully, but his only reaction had been telling them that he was grateful.

+++

The morning Dean felt the first spasms that told of the thing's wish to get out of him, Dean felt the first sparks of emotions that made him wish he could remain here on Earth, alive. He, for the first time, wanted to see this thing inside him alive and growing up, he did no longer see it as a condition that merely kept him out of hell. Out of their reach.

Thus, while unable to change his own fate, he could do something about thing's, Dean let himself vocalize the next scream caused by labor pains. 

Calling Sam to his child.

+++

The birth was complicated, it being an amateur field operation. Dean would not have made it if not for Bobby donating his own blood from out the vein. He'd often been grateful for his being an universal donor, but never as much as that day. They'd prepared for the operation, and herbal poultices healed Dean's new wound better than any medicine available would have. 

The baby was a boy, and it was decided that Dean would name him later.

+++

Later took a long time to come around. 

Awakening the next day after the birth, had done much to jolt Dean out of the deepest bouts of depression. He was not fine by far, he still suffered of post traumatic stress disorder, and was prone to his silent spells, but now signs of recovery could be detected whereas beforehand he had stagnated any progress.

Sam cared for him, now that Dean would let people close to him again. Their romantic relationship showed no signs of ever being the same again, but they adapted. Baby steps. Building up the trust that hell destroyed, tearing down walls together.

Bobby, mainly, cared for the baby. Feed, cleaned and burped him. He did so gladly, the little boy was a joy to be around, now that he slept more than five hours a time, that is. 

It was during the time when spring turned into summer, that Bobby felt Dean was stable enough to meet his son. Properly, on his own, and not letting his eyes gaze over him like he wasn't there. Enough was enough after all. 

So Bobby put the little boy in Dean's arms as Dean sat outside in the sun on a discarded carseat and put a little, heated jar filled with mushed baby food plus spoon next to Dean. He was more rude then necessary, or maybe just enough, as he told Dean to, "Feed your son, idjet!"

+++

Dean regarded the little boy in his arms as solemnly as the little boy did him. Both looked at the other warily. Then the baby apparently decided that his hunger was more important than the new person to hold him and squalled loudly.

It was more self-defence than anything else that Dean fed him the mushy carrot purree. The boy ate with gusto, not allowing Dean to stop feeding him until the jar was empty. Then he burped, loudly, instead of burping up a bit of food. The boy looked so surprised at this noise he'd made that Dean couldn't but to smile at him.

+++

That day Dean named his son Robert, Rob, after Bobby.

 


End file.
